The Ahn'Qiraj Gate Opening Event

[MongoJerry]

THE ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: The Ahn'Qiraj Gate Opening Event

The gates of Ahn'Qiraj finally opened on Tichondrius last night. (They could have opened five days earlier if it weren't for the lazy Alliance players who couldn't get off their collective duffs to farm linen. The Horde finally had to farm a lot of the linen for them). In the days leading up to the big event, an army made up of both factions assembled near Cenarian Hold in Silithus.



Inside one of the buildings in Cenarian Hold, a command center was set up with the commanders of each race involved in the war gazing at a map in the center. The dwarf commander had to stand on a crate to see the map. Interestingly, no members of the gnomes, trolls, or undead were present, and their absence could be seen in the armies surrounding Cenarian Hold. Inside the command center, a conversation could be overheard where High Overlord Saurfang insisted that he be the overall commander of the war effort.



In the hours leading up to the gong ringing event, the server crashed repeatedly. Because of that, people feared what the server would be like during the gate opening event. The gong was scheduled to be rung at 8:48pm, and the server promptly crashed at 8:40pm for about fifteen minutes. When it finally restarted, the gong was promptly rung, and the event began. (Two of my guildmates had scepters and got their legendary mounts -- I'll get screenshots of them when I get a chance).

Because the server was being so laggy and crashy before the event, I wasn't able to get a summon to Silithus. So I was still on the windrider flying down from Orgrimmar to Gadgetzan, when the event started. I flew over the Field of Giants in the Barrens, where I briefly glimpsed some lower level anubisaths (big walking Egyptian dog-people thingies) walking around. Apparently, the event occurs wherever any sort of silithid hive is -- in the Barrens, Tanaris, Shimmering Flats, Ferales, Un'Goro Crater, and of course in Silithus itself. The event mobs in the Barrens are only level 20 elites, I understand.

I landed in Gadgetzan and due to the lag, I couldn't get away from the Gadgetzan bruisers and promptly died (the pirate hat is still worth it!). Once I rezed and got away from town, however, I finally got my first long look at what was happening in all the nearby zones. Broken crystals had spawned in various areas and silithids and anubisaths spawned around them. The goal was to kill the mobs, of course, and in return get some treasure and most importantly, get reputation with the Brood of Nozdormu.



Because of the lag and earlier crashing, a healthy chunk of The Core decided to go inside AQ40 and check it out, the theory being that they'd get away from the lag by being inside an instance and what was the point of seeing the outdoor event if the server was just going to keep crashing? I thought they were fools, however. This was a one time event never to be seen again, while we have months to experiment with and get bored with AQ40. Why miss out on a one time event just to bring the day of boredom one day sooner? Plus, as it turns out, the server stabilized and didn't crash a single time from the moment the gong rang to the moment the server was taken down for server maintenance at 5am.

I and about half a dozen members of The Core stayed outside and ended up hooking up with a pick-up group. Unfortunately, the group was badly organized, and it took us a while to get set up. The group's first idea was to avoid the crowded areas of Silithus and instead hit Tanaris and Un'Goro crater. It turned out, however, that both these areas only had a few crystals and they didn't respawn their mobs fast enough. So, we ended up going to Silithus anyway.



The pick-up group got a big boost when Ephedra joined. Not only did that give us a real tank to work with, but it also turned out that Ephedra had seen this event before with a character on another server. He lead the group around from crystal to crystal to pick off random silithids, anubisaths and occasionally a lieutenant general. Periodically, we would return to the Ahn'Qiraj gate and battle the anubisaths there.



On one of our circuits, we came upon this scene.

Holy #@%^!

Every half hour, a set of eight Anubisath Warbringers would spawn near the gate and would walk up the road to attack Cenarian Hold. We had no idea what to do at this point. Some ideas to split up the pack and pick off individual warbringers failed. We watched as the warbringers closed in on Cenarian Hold, and since at this point in the evening, Silithus had more Alliance in the area than Horde, our straggling pick-up group got slaughtered as we closed in on the town, but we got to see the big battle at least, even if it was in ghost form.



Finally, at about midnight, the main TC raid in AQ40 decided to come outside. I'd been waiting all evening for this moment (and probably didn't endear myself to my guildmates with my periodic mentions of the events going on outside or the reputation gains that various bugs gave), and the first thing I wanted to tackle was one of the big Colossus bugs that spawn in each of the hives in Silithus. Our pick-up group had made a half-hearted attempt to attack the Colossus bug in Ashii and got our collective butts whooped, so I looked forward to taking on one of these bugs with a real organized raid group.

About the only thing we knew about these Colossus bugs was that it was best to fight them in one of the caves. So, we got into one of the hive caves and pulled the Colossus of Regal bug to the cave opening. We damaged it for a while and then got an emote saying something like, "Colossus of Regal lets out a massive attack" whereupon most of the raid died in a massive aoe attack. OK, that didn't work. We wiped, rezzed, and got set up again.

One thing we did learn from this was that the Colossus bugs don't regenerate their health. So, the bug was sitting at 94% health after that first fight. Mind you, that's 94% of 5 million health, but still at least the first fight wasn't a total loss. One person in the raid mentioned that they thought the whole cave idea was merely designed for one of the Colossus bugs and might not be for the Colossus of Regal bug we were fighting. So, maybe that massive attack we got hit with was a frontal cone attack and that fighting in the cave was a bad idea. So we set up to fight the Colossus outside. Hannibal would tank the bug and the rest of us would fight at maximum range to the back and sides of the bug. We did this and when the "massive attack" happened, everyone in the raid got punted clear out of the hive area, about a quarter of the zone away. Thank God for Levitate. Alright, that wasn't such a good idea after all.

At this point, a TAO raid that was farming reputation in the area stopped by to take a crack at the Colossus. They just charged in their with their warriors and started healing them with no pre-planning or placement of their members. I'm sure they felt great. Here, they were beating those "dragon slaying" The Core members to a big bug kill. We watched from the hills above the hive. 5...4...3...2...1... "Colossus of Regal lets out a massive attack." TAO raid members went flying everywhere and were never seen in Hive Regal again.



But Jakeer noticed something during our fight. He stood under one of the big silithid vine formations and when the attack came, he didn't get punted at all. Since the Colossus doesn't seem to have any aoe attacks like a cleave, the idea was to have everyone hang out under that formation, including the main tank. We would still take damage from the massive attack, but we wouldn't be punted. We tried it, and although our main tank died quickly due to lack of heals, one of our druids, Xypher, ended up bear tanking the bug for quite a while and the idea seemed pretty good. However, the massive attack was still devastating, even if we didn't get punted. The bug at this point was down to like 83% health.

We finally decided to try the cave idea again. This time, the thought was that if the emote gave us any warning of the attack that perhaps we could all run down the side passages in the caves to avoid the massive attack. Unfortunately, we found that there is no warning. The emote happens at the same time as the attack, so we all bought the farm. The Colossus of Regal's life was down to 80%..

It seems to me that there are three ways to take down a Colossus:

1. Kite it to Cenarian Hold and have the NPC's kill it. This was how the Colossus of Ashii was taken down by another group earlier in the evening. Unfortunately, the other Colossuses are much farther away from CH, and they move as fast as an epic mount. It would take a massive kiting relay to kite them all the way to CH.

2. Use a very patient group of hunters. One of our hunters, Cragb, figured out that he could aimed shot, viper sting, and feign death to repeatedly damage the Colossus. The Colossus's life doesn't regenerate, so a group of hunters doing this over the course of a few hours could slowly but surely take down a Colossus's life.

3. Zerg the mother out of it. This seems like the strategy that Blizzard had intended to be used. It's not a tankable encounter. Bringing everybody in the zone to deal damage and constantly graveyard rush the Colossus seems like the fastest and surest way to bring the bug down. This method would be more realistic if everyone involved in the zerg could get the 2,000 reputation gain for bringing the bug down. Unfortunately, only the tapping raid gets credit for it, so it's tough to get hundreds of people to help with the event.

At this point, it was already well past midnight, and some people left to go to sleep and others complained that they wanted to see the rest of the outdoor event and farm for reputation. I was disappointed that we weren't determined enough to take down the Colossus, but I understood. This was exactly why I wished that most of the guild hadn't gone into AQ40 right after the gong had been rung. If we had had a fresh 40-man raid doing outdoor events at 9pm, I have no doubt that we would have taken down at least one of the Colossus bugs. But at least we'd made some good attempts at it. I would have been even more disappointed if we hadn't even tried to fight it.

[MongoJerry]

We started making circuits around the zone, killing bugs, anubisaths, and other critters. Our numbers started to dwindle to the point where we thought it might be a good idea to hook up with another guild reputation farming in the area, and it turned out that the TAO farming group was at about half strength, too. We combined our raids, and that's when the rate of reputation gain turned up a notch. One of the idiosyncrasies of reputation farming is that players get the same reputation gain from killing a mob whether they kill it alone or in a 40-person raid group, so the bigger the group, the better. With a 40-man raid group, we were able at one point to tap, tank, and kill four supreme anubisaths at once, keeping the taps away from the other reputation grinding groups wandering the zone. At 250 reputation a piece, that was a big reputation boost in a short amount of time.



During the fights, some people had fun by showering the supreme anubisaths with Valentine's Day flowers, which caused massive rose petals to fall all around the raid party.



A big anubisath raiding party spawned to attack Cenarian Hold again, and this time our raid was ready.



We raced ahead of the anubisath pack to Cenarian Hold. As you can see, High Overlord Saurfang had prepared his line of troops for the upcoming battle.

Right before the anubisaths got to Cenarian Hold, our mages charged in to aoe (combined with limited invulnerability pots) and blink out and our warriors charged in to Thunderclap to try to tag all of the anubisaths. Healers did whatever they could to heal anyone who managed to tap anubisaths, getting aggro on themselves, and we all ran into Cenarian Hold.



The battle itself was quite a sight to behold. High Warlord Saurfang is a monster and tanked every anubisath himself while both players and NPC's nuked down the invaders. In this particular fight, we managed to tap all eight anubisaths, so at 250 reputation each, we got a whopping 2000 reputation with the Brood of Nozdormu for about five minutes of work. Sometimes other raids managed to get some of the other taps, so we weren't always so lucky, but we always managed to get the tap on at least a few of them.



We continued to circle around Silithus battling bugs and anubisaths.



Finally, at 4:45pm, the last invasion of Cenarian Hold before the scheduled server maintenance spawned and it was a doozy. This group included not only anubisaths but also destroyers who aoe feared.



This invasion was so powerful, not even High Overlord Saurfang could survive it. Luckily, by the time he died, we had killed enough of the invaders that we could finish off the remnants without his help. Our raid managed to get the tap on all these mobs, too, so that was a huge bump in reputation for us.



By the end of the evening, I'd gotten to 26250/36000 Hated reputation with the Brood of Nozdormu. But since at least 20,000 of that was gotten in the final four hours before the server maintenance, I see that this only shows what could have been done. If we had had a full organized raid going from the moment that the gong had rung, we could have all easily have gotten our reputations with the Brood of Nozdormu to neutral -- even with the shortened gate opening event due to the server maintenance. Oh, well. I still had a lot of fun running around during the event, and I look forward to tackling the two new Ahn'Qiraj raid dungeons in the coming weeks.

[Walkiry]

The gates of Ahn'Qiraj finally opened on Tichondrius last night.  (They could have opened five days earlier if it weren't for the lazy Alliance players who couldn't get off their collective duffs to farm linen.  The Horde finally had to farm a lot of the linen for them).[right][snapback]102628[/snapback][/right]

Indeed! How dare they not do their JOB with a mind-numbing boring grind in a game? Gosh, what is the world coming to? :rolleyes:

[MongoJerry]

Indeed! How dare they not do their JOB with a mind-numbing boring grind in a game? Gosh, what is the world coming to?  :rolleyes:

Hey, they get rep for it and get to go into the dungeons and do the new Silithus outdoor quests. Damn straight, it was their jobs to do it -- especially since there are more organized alliance guilds on the server than Horde ones. Stupid lazy people.

[Quark]

And just how much help did you give them to finish this?

As Darian pointed out, the Horde was helped by us to finish. However, the Horde did help us out too.

[Walkiry]

Hey, they get rep for it and get to go into the dungeons and do the new Silithus outdoor quests.  Damn straight, it was their jobs to do it -- especially since there are more organized alliance guilds on the server than Horde ones.  Stupid lazy people.
[right][snapback]102634[/snapback][/right]

All of that would have happened regardless at the end of the month. And besides that, there's absolutely no reason why anyone should do a "job" in a game if they don't find it enjoyable, much less when they're paying monthly for said game.

[Xanthix]

It's unfortunate your server decided to open the gates when the event would be cut off by the maintenance.

I was able to see the end of the gate opening event on my server. All the NPC's start yelling about making a final charge and driving the bugs back. Then they make their way South to the gates (along with 2000 players or so...). I missed part of the following, but I saw a few waves of Anubisaths that came out of the gate, and then when the fight is concluded all the crystals despawn, so no more bugs and bosses will spawn.

The funny part is that as soon as the crystals despawn, the normal Silithus mobs resume spawning. However, obviously Blizzard's dynamic spawn rate code is still in effect. So, since you have thousands of players in the zone, all these snakes and scorpions start spawning at insane rates. This does nothing to help the lag, of course.

On our server I don't know if even one of the Colossi were slain. It's a shame there wasn't more reason to band together and kill them, or a better strategy than "nuke once, die, rez, repeat."

[Darian]

(They could have opened five days earlier if it weren't for the lazy Alliance players who couldn't get off their collective duffs to farm linen.  The Horde finally had to farm a lot of the linen for them).
[right][snapback]102628[/snapback][/right]

Amusingly enough, on Stormrage it was the Alliance helping farm materials for the Horde. . .

[Warlock]

All of that would have happened regardless at the end of the month. And besides that, there's absolutely no reason why anyone should do a "job" in a game if they don't find it enjoyable, much less when they're paying monthly for said game.
[right][snapback]102638[/snapback][/right]

As a non-raider - do a massive grind to enable content I'll never see? No thanks.

[MongoJerry]

As a non-raider - do a massive grind to enable content I'll never see? No thanks.

Whine, whine, whine. It opens up outdoor content, too. And start doing some raiding. It's fun! Also, there were plenty of Alliance raiding guilds who could have organized linen farming runs, but they didn't -- or did it very sporadically. The Horde ended up doing a huge push to get linen farmed, when the Alliance guilds could just as easily have done it themselves.

[MongoJerry]

It's unfortunate your server decided to open the gates when the event would be cut off by the maintenance.

Yes, there was a strong attempt to agree to hold off on ringing the gong until the server came back up from server maintenance on Tuesday, but one of the Alliance guilds with a scepter wouldn't agree to it. They wanted the epeen that comes from ringing the gong and would not wait. Too bad.

[Artega]

Whine, whine, whine.  It opens up outdoor content, too.  And start doing some raiding.  It's fun!  Also, there were plenty of Alliance raiding guilds who could have organized linen farming runs, but they didn't -- or did it very sporadically.  The Horde ended up doing a huge push to get linen farmed, when the Alliance guilds could just as easily have done it themselves.
[right][snapback]102693[/snapback][/right]

Raiding is a lot like PvP - some people love it to death, others are more or less neutral, and some hate it with unbridled passion.  I'm one of those that hate it - I think it's a regressive nature of gameplay, substituting boring repetition for dynamic anything.  It's like how I (and presumably you, from several posts you've made) adore PvP in all its forms, while some can't stand it :)

[Warlock]

Whine, whine, whine.  It opens up outdoor content, too.  And start doing some raiding.  It's fun!  Also, there were plenty of Alliance raiding guilds who could have organized linen farming runs, but they didn't -- or did it very sporadically.  The Horde ended up doing a huge push to get linen farmed, when the Alliance guilds could just as easily have done it themselves.
[right][snapback]102693[/snapback][/right]

I have thirteen raid epics. It's been some of the dullest and most impersonal gaming I've ever done - I'm no longer playing my character, I'm playing healbot #7 or dps #22 while following the raid leader's script. I'll stick with it until we kill Rag so as not to let my guild down and then I'm never going back.

Yeah, it opens outdoor content too. Raiders get two entire new instances with challenging (at least the first time), elaborately scripted encounters and several hundred new items to collect, non-raiders get an endless grind against standard mobs leading to a couple of useful items per class. I'll let the feasters do the work and wait for my scraps.

[Concillian]

They wanted the epeen that comes from ringing the gong and would not wait.

So, because they rang it first, does that mean they have a long gong dong?

(in their minds, at least)

[MongoJerry]

Raiding is a lot like PvP - some people love it to death, others are more or less neutral, and some hate it with unbridled passion.  I'm one of those that hate it - I think it's a regressive nature of gameplay, substituting boring repetition for dynamic anything.  It's like how I (and presumably you, from several posts you've made) adore PvP in all its forms, while some can't stand it :)

You know, I really don't care. I spent the better part of an afternoon writing this, picking out and cropping images, and editing it (and yes, I see several grammar errors that got past me *sigh*). I took the time to take notes and screenshots as I ran around that evening just so that I could write this up. Then, I posted it most prominently here but also at a couple other places. At other places, I got recieved many thanks. At the Basin, I got something even better -- people telling their own experiences of the gate opening event. Here, all I get is bitching and moaning about a person not wanting to farm linen and complaints about there not being enough non-raiding content in the game. Ordinarily, I'd be sympathetic, but come on, guys, enough's enough. If you're not happy with the game, stop paying to play it. Maybe the expansion will have improvements that you want, so perhaps you can renew your account then. But if you're not going to cancel your account, at least take the time to enjoy some of the good aspects of the game, and this gate opening event was definitely an exciting moment that should be enjoyed by as many people as possible. In the meantime, if someone obviously puts some work into creating something here for you to enjoy, at least take the time to acknowledge the time and effort the person put into it before starting your bitching and moaning.

[Gorthag]

Here, all I get is bitching and moaning about a person not wanting to farm linen and complaints about there not being enough non-raiding content in the game.  Ordinarily, I'd be sympathetic, but come on, guys, enough's enough.  If you're not happy with the game, stop paying to play it.
[right][snapback]102796[/snapback][/right]

Maybe if you didn't come out with a high-and-mighty attitude talking smack about others in the game not participating in your playstyle you wouldn't get that reaction.

[oldmandennis]

Thx for the writeup. Unfortunatly I was flying cross country when my servers gong was rung. Stupid work.... If I didn't have to pay for my internet/account....

[vor_lord]

In the meantime, if someone obviously puts some work into creating something here for you to enjoy, at least take the time to acknowledge the time and effort the person put into it before starting your bitching and moaning.
[right][snapback]102796[/snapback][/right]

Hey I really enjoyed your writeup. I wasn't able to see anything for myself when the gates opened on Terenas, so I was really glad to see your pictures etc. It's a unique event. I did a couple of much lamer writeups myself for the Insane Cloth Posse and it was a lot of work (still haven't put together the Wailing Caverns stuff and we did that back in September). I know there are plenty of people that appreciate this stuff, especially those of us who want to be raiders but can't.

But I thought the gist of Artega's post was "to each their own" so give him a break. Why Walkiry feels the need to continually post in threads for WoW I don't know. He barely played the game and hated it, yet can't leave it alone all the same :lol:

Warlock:

About your lack of enjoyment raiding: were you part of developing the raid leaders' "script"? Or did you join up after things were mostly in farm status?

[Warlock]

Mongojerry, I did enjoy the writeup, as I've enjoyed the others that you've done - your reports here were the largest single factor in convincing me to take the plunge when the game hit retail. For this thread in particular the entire gate opening event happened while I was at work so I had no chance to catch it myself and I do appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences. My post here wasn't intended to derail the thread, just a comment from my POV as to why some players might not be as brimming with enthusiasm for the war effort farming as you were.

Vor_lord, I've been running MC with my guild since the start and have had a fair bit of input into our strategies, especially the earlier bosses. We don't yet have the whole instance on farm status - Domo has gone down a couple of times but we are still accumulating the FR gear for Ragnaros. I'm effectively class lead (we don't have a formal system) for my two classes and fairly senior in the guild. I still feel very much cog-in-the-machine when raiding.
I was one of the major instigators of us recruiting and gearing up to raid (partly because having been on the outside looking in for so long I expected to really enjoy the new challenges and partly because I already had two characters at raid-or-quit status and levelling and equipping a third didn't attract) and hence feel that I ought to see it through. Not long now I hope.

As for quitting the game... I don't know. I have unsubscribed, but when my time actually runs out in a few weeks it's going to be hard to walk away from the friends I've made and the characters that I've put so much time and effort into. At the moment I intend to quit, but it's easy for any addict to say that while they're still taking the drug.

[frankieboy]

Great Story, as usual!

On my server the gates will open up on sunday, thanks for the teaser ;-)